Water Heater Rescue site map

Resources -- Information and links to related sites.
About Us
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Welcome Page -- If this is your first time, here's how to find your way around.
For Contractors -- If you want products in quantity, contact us.

The Basics: Longevity and Preventive Maintenance -- If you want to know how your water water heater is made and what factors affect its longevity, start here. Topics:

The Inside Story -- How a tank is made, why it breaks.
What Kills Water Heaters -- Usually it's rust that kills water heaters, but neglect claims its share, as can hidden pressure problems.
Anodes -- The hidden ingredient -- that you can control -- that determines how long a water heater lasts.
Sediment -- It dissolves out of hard water, settling into the bottom of the heater, where it makes scary noises, harms the tank bottom and burns out electric elements and recirculation pumps.
Safety -- Your water heater may not be as meek and mild as you think.
Emergency Preparedness -- How to ensure that you can get to the water stored in your heater if disaster strikes.
Tankless Heaters -- Instantaneous water heaters sound like a big improvement over tank-type heaters. But are they?
Choosing a Water Heater -- Configuration is a lot more important than brand.
Preventive Maintenance -- What you need to do, through the years, to keep your tank functioning efficiently and safely.
Know-How -- This is the hands-on guide to implementing preventive maintenance.
The Best Water Heater -- A few added parts will give you a superior tank at big savings.
Insulation and Energy Efficiency -- Comparing water heaters has gotten more complicated, but it can still be done, and should be done.
Water Heating According to Larry -- Water-heater maintenance pioneer wLarry Weingarten uses answers in The Tank to enunciate his philosophy about water heating and plumbing.
Save Water, Save Energy -- Three mechanical systems and two design systems aimed at cutting your wait for hot water, keeping too much cold water from being wasted while waiting for hot water to arrive at a fixture, and saving energy.
Life-Cycle Cost Analysis -- A simple tool for comparing the overall cost of different water heaters you might be considering buying.
Tools -- We tell you to use certain tools to do certain maintenance on water heaters. Here is a description of what those are and what they do.

Troubleshooting -- We offer several sections of written information, as well as the opportunity to post your problem on our bulletin board, The Tank. Topics are:

Quick -- Quick fixes, tips and caveats.

Tanklets -- Questions e-mailed to us in the early years of the site and our answers, and interesting problems from The Tank.

Smelly Water -- What to do if your water smells like rotten eggs.

The Peroxide Gambit -- Perhaps the only fix for smelly water in vacation cabins and second homes.

Not Enough Hot Water -- It can have several wildly different causes, and is one of the most common complaints.

Lingo -- Glossary of water heater terms. Topics:

Water Heaters in Commercial Settings -- Commercial applications, such as apartment complexes and restaurants.

The Future of Water Heating -- People and their ideas for where water-heating should be headed.

Products and Return Policy -- Rescuer kits can be used to retrofit an older tank or prefit a new one. They include an anode rod, sediment flush kit, Water Heater Workbook, instructions keyed to the book, a service sticker, and pipe seal tape. Their component parts can be used as needed. Aluminum/zinc anodes solve or reduce smelly water problems, and powered anodes do that in softened systems. The flush kit blasts sediment out of the tank. The book, by Larry and Suzanne Weingarten, is a cornucopia of information. Demand pumps will shorten your wait for hot water and save both water and energy..

Antique Water Heater Museum -- There's more than one way to heat water. Here are some superior designs from the past:

The Closet of Horrors -- Halloween can be any night of the year. All you have to do is ignore your water heater. These are some of the scarier of our inspection findings:

The Harry Houdini Showcase -- Showcase of water heater installations that only an escape artist could hope to service.

The House on Hummingbird Hill: Beginnings -- In 1992, two people decided to build an incredible house that would heat, cool and take care of itself..

The House on Hummingbird Hill: Breaking the Rules -- The Weingartens had unique ideas that they wanted to implement in a house and they broke a few "rules" to do it -- or maybe invented some new ones..

Inside Technologies -- All the stuff like heating and cooling, plumbing and such.

Outside Technologies -- All the stuff like insulation, water, gas, roofing, siding and such.

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